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Home Tools Design Test Build Dragon Raceway Build - Rally Build - Shelves Electronics Cars Racing Other Tracks Comment Links Home THIS SITE IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION, THINGS MAY BREAK!!
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I've started writing these pages to document my construction of a HO Routed raceway. This site was inspired by another gentleman by the name of Will Brant who wrote a page about the subject (please see Links section). After a few months he moved to 1/43rd scale - I believe reading his blog that the sliding "feel" of the racecar was important to him, and generally around the web there are many sites on constructing the larger scale raceway as they are more forgiving in their construction. The design of the guide flag on the larger scaled cars is easier to accomodate with either copper tape or braid next to the original route. With a HO scale raceway, there are three channels required to be routed (one for the guide, and two for power) and as the scale gets smaller, the dimensions become more critical.
These pages are dedicated to keeping tabs on what methods I use, what I find and how to get around any problems. Hopefully you can benefit from this if you are wanting to build your own HO Scale raceway. Please feel free to use the contact section of this site to add comments or to ask questions. You may also want to try the for some answers.
I enjoy making the occasional woodworking odds and ends, but I'm not a mastercraftsman by any means. I work in an office as a webdesigner during the day, and feel that this project is not too far beyond me. My woodworking skills are basic, so this will be an exercise in making mistakes and finding ways around them. Patience is a must.
I got back into slotcar racing in the middle of 2005, just before my Mum passed away from Cancer, she handed me a box full of my old toy cars, and her death made me want to go back to my roots which included many hours of setting up and taking down tracks with my next door neighbour, Ross.
We originally raced Scalectrix (I believe it's called Scalectrix "Classic" now) and my pride and joy was a John Player Special F1 which was probably slightly quicker than Ross' Datsun 260Z - a moot point between two pre-teens having fun racing cars. I can't remember that we timed anything, or counted the number of laps, just chased the hours away with cars going around and the frequent crash. We also discovered a place/club in Perth called Strombeckers which had a much larger track and more fierce competition.
Update: The Strombeckers track recently sold on eBay. I've put the auction page (after the sale) in PDF here.
After my neighbour moved away, I found a new friend in High School who had an AFX set - he marvelled how cheap the cars were (this was in my early teens, no job yet!) and how big he could set his track for the space in his room. I enjoyed playing with his set, but wasn't prepared to sell my large investment in Scalectrix, and although the AFX was, in some ways better, the Scalectrix had rear end sliding and superior tracks & not everything was a 90° curve!
When we moved away a few years after that the track was set up a few times, but with no competition (apart from my younger brother on occasion) and new interests the set moved from my bedroom to the shed, and a few years later I sold it for the grand sum of $au100. This was a large track, and probably 10 cars plus odds and ends. I see how much the cars sell for now, and wish eBay existed all those years ago.
So in mid 2005 I purchased an AFX set from eBay, the smaller size being a benefit to my new living circumstances. The fellow lived a couple of suburbs away from me. He was a friendly chap who knew another couple of guys into slot cars. He asked if I'd be interested in getting together sometime for a race, nothing too competitive, and it sounded like fun. We kept contact and now race every month or so. You can see some of the pictures from our meets on my other website.
I started to research into the history of HO racing, and slot cars in general, and found there was a lot of information on the internet. So rather than repeat what others have said before, I've made a seperate section on the links page for the history lesson.